To O’Neill the Queen sent a pardon, with a safe conduct to England, if he could be prevailed on to go.  In the meantime Shane sent a message to the lord deputy, demanding the removal of the garrison from Armagh.  One of his messengers, Neill Grey communicated secretly with Lord Sussex, affecting to dislike rebellion, and intimating that he might help the English to get rid of his master.  The lord deputy, without the least scruple or apparent consciousness of the criminality or disgrace of the proceeding, actually proposed to this man that he should murder O’Neill.  This villanous purpose he avows in his letter to the Queen.  ‘In fine,’ said he, ’I breake with him to kill Shane; and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marcs of land by the year to him, and to his heirs, for his reward.  He seemed desirous to serve your Highness, and to have the land; but fearful to do it, doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and promised to do by any means he might, escaping with his life.  What he will do I know not, but I assure your Highness he may do it without danger if he will.  And if he will not do that he may in your service, there will be done to him what others may.  God send your Highness a good end.’

This English nobleman was, it seems, pious as well as honourable, and could mingle prayers with his plots for assassination.  Mr. Froude suggests extenuating circumstances:  ’Lord Sussex, it appears, regarded Shane as a kind of wolf, whom having failed to capture in fair chase he might destroy by the first expedient that came to his hand.’  And ’English honour, like English coin, lost something of its purity in the sister island.’  Of course; it was the Irish atmosphere that did it all.  But Sussex was not singular in this mode of illustrating English honour.  A greater than he, the chivalrous Sir Walter Raleigh, wrote to a friend in Munster, recommending the treacherous assassination of the Earl of Desmond, as perfectly justifiable.  And this crime, for which an ignorant Irishman would be hanged, was deliberately suggested by the illustrious knight whilst sitting quietly in his English study.[1] But what perplexes the historian most of all is that the Queen of England showed no resentment at the infamous proposal of Sussex.  ’It is most sadly certain, however, that Sussex was continued in office, and inasmuch as it will be seen that he repeated the experiment a few months later, his letter could not have been received with any marked condemnation.’  Yet Elizabeth was never in Ireland.

[Footnote 1:  See Life of Sir Walter Raleigh.]